


things you said you'd never say that you said anyway

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Late Night Conversations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He’s a quick boy, though, clever like their father, like the swordsman, like Sophia, <i>clever like me</i> Jessica thinks, fleeting, so he picks up the lead from where she dropped it."</p><p>Three conversations best spoken in darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	things you said you'd never say that you said anyway

**Author's Note:**

  * For [just_ann_now](https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_ann_now/gifts).



> So I promised a friend I would write something ridiculous and fun, and this is really really not that, but it's been sitting in my hard drive for a while, and I thought it was time to get it up and posted. The middle section is a (very) revised version of a prompt just_ann_now left over on my journal here: http://psuedo-catalyst.livejournal.com/32276.html?thread=754196#t754196
> 
> The title is from The Magnetic Fields' "The Things We Did And Didn't Do"

_A Conversation Between The Living And The Dead_

Alec can’t see Richard anymore— _and that_ he thinks visciously _is what comes of being dead as well as blind. You can’t see anyone and no one can see you either_ \--and for the sake of the rapidly depleting sanity people have been doubting for decades that he had to begin with, he avoids wondering whether being dead might have unexpected bonus of, at the very least, restoring lost sight. He can’t see Richard, but that doesn’t stop him from carrying on conversations with him. Richard often wasn’t much of a conversationalist to begin with.

He stops doing so out loud so often once he’s taken in by the lovely lady-doctor who can never cure what ails him, but doesn’t seem to want to stop trying. He wonders if Richard misses them, those little one-sided chats about the weather, and the mathematics Richard never cared to hear about when he was alive, and the way the sight of his lifeless body won’t leave the forefront of Alec’s mind even after the days, weeks, months, maybe years, have passed, and the way the memory tears a new hole in his chest every time he thinks of it, which is often.

 _Most likely not_ Alec thinks. Richard never did have much patience for theatrics of grief.

“We’re leaving these islands,” Alec tells him, or tells the wind, whichever happens to be listening in the cool night air, a few days before they do. “Sophia and I are, anyway. I don’t know about you, I don’t know how these things work, once you’re dead. You never wanted to go back there anyway.”

In the distance, he can hear an owl’s eerie call echoing into the night. He knows it’s not meant for him, but answers it anyway. “I know, I didn’t either, but Richard, I’m dying.”

Alec knows it. He can feel it in his bones, which have felt fragile as glass since the day he disentangled his hand, far too late, from a cold, lifeless one, and which feel like they’re practically crumbling now, even as he finds himself slipping, more and more often, into a detached kind of peace. “I suppose I’ve decided that if you couldn’t be bothered stick around to finish the job the way you promised, letting Katherine talk me to death would be the next-cleanest way.”

Alec will miss Kyros. It is cool with fall air tonight, but still warmer than this time of year has ever been, or will ever be, in the city. “That’s not fair,” he concedes the point about Katherine the way he knew he would before he even made it, and “Maybe it will even be good to see her again,” which, he thinks, is one of the most mature and adult thoughts he’s ever expressed out loud.

There’s a creaking sound from inside, and Alec wonders if he’s woken Sophia, who can certainly understand almost every word he says, now. She’s a quick study, clever and bright and stronger than Alec ever wanted to be. “She’s pregnant,” he tells Richard, although the Richard that lives in his head, that hovers around his buzzing temples and never leaves him alone, already knows it. “Never thought I’d have even one specimen of offspring, let alone two. Not sure it’s the best idea, but it’s too late for second thoughts now.”

He pauses for a moment, listens to Sophia make up a fire inside. She won’t come out when he’s talking, won't interrupt Alec’s conversation, and for that he’s grateful. She is so polite. He hopes the child takes after her.

“I’m not even sure what you’d say to that,” he admits, a little helplessly. “I’d ask you, but that would just send the problem in circles, wouldn’t it?”

Inside, the fire crackles, and a beautiful young woman is waiting for him. Alec rubs cold hands together and tells the waiting silence, “We leave tomorrow.”

 

_A Conversation Between The Living About The Dead_

“Jess?” Theron asks from her doorway, and Jessica is not surprised. He’d been strange and distant to her all through dinner, though he’d been far from shy the last time she’d seen him, and that had only been four or five years ago—practically yesterday, in terms of the kind of distance Jessica likes to keep from the city, these days. Theron had kept shooting furtive looks in Jessica’s direction all through the meal, though, and hadn’t added anything when Marcus’s girls had gotten bold enough to start asking her for stories of her travels. She’s been waiting for her young brother to approach her ever since Sophia sent him off to one of Katherine’s absurd number of spare rooms for the night.

Jessica looks up from her spot on a footstool close to the fire, where she’s mending a leather hauberk. Armor is practically an archaism these days, but there are times when Jess travels to places where she likes to have a bit of a thicker skin. “Can I ask you something?” Theron asks her, and the courteous words sound awkward in his mouth. Jessica pats the chair her stool goes to, which is near the other end of the fire. “Get over here, we’ll chat.”

After a moment he says, “Mother says you were here in the city when my—when our father died.”

Jessica doesn’t call him on the slip, just looks up from her mending and nods. He’s a big boy, now, a gangly adolescent, he can ask the question for himself if he wants to hear the answer.

“What was he like?”

“At the end?” Jessica asks, but doesn’t wait for him to give a response. “Smug, I suppose. Quiet. Amused.” Curious, she fires back a question of her own. “What does Sophia say he was like?”

“She says he was very clever and very sad. And that I get my wild streak from him.” Theron looks a little smug himself about the last point. It makes Jessica smile.

He’s a quick boy, though, clever like their father, like the swordsman, like Sophia, _clever like me_ Jessica thinks, fleeting, so he picks up the lead from where she dropped it, asks her, “Did you know him before that, then? Before the end?”

“I visited him once,” Jessica admits, smiling at the memory. “I was a bit younger than you are, and he sent for me—curious about me, I guess. It was my first time on a ship, you know.”

The wistfulness in her tone is real, it truly is a fond memory, but she’s also winding him up a bit, with the misdirect.

“What was he like back then?” Theron asks, though, determined as a terrier, not to be distracted. “Did you meet my mother then?”

That question brings Jessica up short, because how little can this boy really know about his own family history? Jessica knew hers long before she even thought to want to, was never allowed to forget it. She says, “No, this was long before he met Sophia. She isn’t that many years older than I am, you know.”

Theron clearly is not to be distracted, so Jessica goes on. “It was just him and the swordsman, when I was there—surely you’ve heard the stories about St. Vier?” She doesn’t wait for his nod before she continues. He lives in Riverside, of course he has. “They lived in a cottage on a cliff, and the locals thought they were sorcerers. A bit of a change from thinking he was mad, at least.”

Theron stares at her, intent and hungry in the firelight, so she throws him a bone. “He liked that I was clever—he’d have liked that you’re curious enough to be asking.”

“But was he mad?” There’s fear in this question, and Jessica has never really been in the position to be a normal terror of an older sister. She allows herself a moment for dramatic pause—Rose always said it was the pauses as much as the speeches that made a performance—takes in Theron’s nervous, waiting face, and then asks him, “Does Sophia say he was mad?”

Theron snorts at that, says, “Of course not. But she loved him.” He sounds like such a child, such a _boy_ that Jessica nearly spoils the moment by grinning, but she’s glad, she thinks, that even growing up here, indulged and spoiled and _loved_ , he has managed to learn enough about life to understand the distorting power of affection.

Still, “I think your mother is clear-eyed enough about people that she would have been able to love him _and_ think he was mad, if that was what the situation demanded.” Jessica likes Sophia, she doesn’t think her son should be going around underestimating her. “No, I think he had too much fun playing mad for so many years to ever have time to actually _go_ mad. I think he didn't like parts of the world, so he chose to live in a different one.”

There’s something considering in Theron’s face, and Jessica is struck with the creeping sense that she has helped to stir up trouble in this boy’s mind. The thought doesn’t bother her as much as the Katherine who lives in her head thinks it should. Into Theron’s sudden silence, she tells him, “There—that’s quite enough of that.” The gash in her hauberk has been mended and then reinforced in the time this conversation has taken. “Sophia will have my hide if I give her any reason to think I’m being a bad influence on you. Or any influence, really.” She leans over to ruffle his hair, then pushes his forehead back lightly, with her fingertips. “Off to bed with you, now.”

 

_A Conversation Between Two Ghosts_

“Perhaps I just hit the wrong place in time again,” the voice comes out of the darkness, quiet, amused and _old_. “Perhaps I put my bet on the wrong Campion.”

“Don’t fool yourself,” the other replies, distracted and out of breath, as if he’s exercising. “Alec wouldn’t have been anyone’s king.” A moment of silence but for the sound of heavy breathing and well-tempered metal thudding against plaster, and then, softer, satisfied, “He never wanted to be anybody’s anything, except for the times when he was mine.”


End file.
